Taboo eBook

THE LEGEND

Fit ex his consuetudo, inde natura

“I love little pussy,
Her fur is so warm.”

I—­How Horvendile Met Fate and Custom

Now, at about the time that the Tyrant Pedagogos fell
into disfavor with his people, avers old Nicanor (as
the curious may verify by comparing Lib. X, Chap.
28 of his Mulberry Grove), passed through Philistia
a clerk whom some called Horvendile, travelling by
compulsion from he did not know where toward a goal
which he could not divine. So this Horvendile
said, “I will make a book of this journeying,
for it seems to me a rather queer journeying.”

They answered him: “Very well, but if you
have had dinner or supper by the way, do you make
no mention of it in your book. For it is a law
among us, for the protection of our youth, that eating[2]
must never be spoken of in any of our writing.”

[Footnote 2: Such at least is the generally received
rendering. Ackermann, following Buelg’s
probably spurious text, disputes that this is the
exact meaning of the noun.]

Horvendile considered this a curious enactment, but
it seemed only one among the innumerable mad customs
of Philistia. So he shrugged, and he made the
book of his journeying, and of the things which he
had seen and heard and loved and hated and had put
by in the course of his passage among ageless and
unfathomed mysteries.

And in the book there was nowhere any word of eating.

2—­How the Garbage Man Came with Forks

Now to the book which Horvendile had made comes presently
a garbage-man, newly returned from foreign travel
for his health’s sake, whose name was John.
And this scavenger cried, “Oh, horrible! for
here is very shameless mention of a sword and a spear
and a staff.”

“Why, one has but to write ‘a fork’
here, in the place of each of these offensive weapons,
and the reference to eating is plain.”

“That also is true, but it would be your writing
and not my writing which would refer to eating.”

John said, “Abandoned one, it is the law of
Philistia and the holy doctrine of St. Anthony Koprologos
that if anybody chooses to understand any written
word anywhere as meaning ‘to eat,’ the
word henceforward has that meaning.”

“Then you of Philistia have very foolish laws.”

To which John the Scavenger sagely replied: “Ah,
but if laws exist they ought to fairly and impartially
and without favoritism be enforced until amended or
repealed. Much of the unsettled condition prevailing
in the country at the present time can be traced directly
to a lack of law enforcement in many directions during
past years.”

“Now I misdoubt if I understand you, Messire
John, for your infinitives are split beyond comprehension.
And when you talk about the non-enforcement of anything
in many directions, even though these directions were
during past years, I find it so confusing that the
one thing of which I can be quite certain is that
it was never you whom the law selected to pass upon
and to amend all books.”